MARIA FERNANDA CARDOSO

Maria Fernanda Cardoso is an international artist, born in Colombia, currently living in Sydney, Australia. Graduating from Yale University with a Masters degree in Sculpture and Installation in 1990, she is well known for her unconventional use of materials and the use of animals as inspiration.

Cardoso exhibits widely in major museums and galleries in the US, Latin America, Australia and Europe. In 2003 she had a major solo show Zoomorphia at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, and a mid-career survey at BLLA, the leading contemporary art museum in Bogota, Colombia. In 2000, the Museum of Modern Art in New York commissioned her to make a major installation for their millennium show, “Modern Starts”. Here she installed 36,000 plastic lilies in a 125 foot long wall — which subsequently toured to the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, Miami Art Museum, and the Walker Art Center. In 2003 she represented Colombia at the Venice Biennale, exhibiting a large installation of starfish woven together into a submarine landscape titled Woven Water.

Other projects include shows at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, PS1, the San Francisco Exploratorium, the Centre Georges Pompidou, Fundacion La Caixa in Barcelona, the DAROS Foundation in Zurich and the Centro Reina Sofia in Madrid. Her most re-known project, the Cardoso Flea Circus, was recently acquired by the Tate Gallery in London as part of its permanent collection. The Circus has been widely exhibited in festivals and museums around the world, and was performed at the Sydney Opera House as part of the Sydney Festival 2000, where it was a smash hit.

Other collections include the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Miami Art Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Daros Collection, BLLA and Mambo Collections in Bogota, National Art Gallery, Canberra and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, among others. Cardoso has been a visiting artist and professor at the California Institute for the Arts in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Art Institute and the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogota.



BEN QUILTY

Ben Quilty was born in 1973 in Sydney. He is one of Australia’s most acclaimed young artists. His works are held in major private and public collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; and Queensland University of Technology Art Museum, Brisbane. His work has been included in the Archibald Prize in 2008, 2006, 2005 and 2004, and his most recent show at GRANTPIRRIE, SMASHED, was exhibited in Sydney, the Melbourne Art Fair and Newcastle University Gallery to wide acclaim. He is a graduate of the Sydney College of the Arts at the University of Sydney and has completed residencies in Hill End, Sydney, Melbourne, Paris and Barcelona.

Quilty's practice has consistently explored the role and role-play of young males in contemporary Western society. He has been a willing participant in the initiation processes that define the 'coming of age' of a young man. The imagery he employs comes out of the violence of a suburban male adolescence.  His practise has also explored the cultural destruction of indigenous aboriginal people and the birth of a zealously patriotic 'white' Australia. The ongoing role of males in this paradigm also informs the broader context of Quilty's investigation.



CAROLINE ROTHWELL

Caroline Rothwell’s work often explores scenarios from the natural world as a way of investigating the human response to its surroundings.

She uses industrial materials and shapes them into objects via unusual hand-rendered processes. For instance, molten metal is poured into hand-sewn fabric moulds creating impossibly voluminous metal sculpture; vinyl is hand-cut and laid up into architectural space to create massive calligraphic-like drawings; pvc is sewn and inflated to create monuments from plastic and air. The industrial materials, which are hand-rendered and teamed with ‘natural’ imagery, create a dynamic tension in the work.

Caroline is interested in the interplay between abstraction and figuration, allowing psychologically complex readings of the work as well as an immediate aesthetic response.  Although derived from natural forms, the works transcend the sources from which they come, creating alternative interpretations through materials, amorphous treatment of scale and the multiple perspectives of symmetry. 

Caroline has had numerous sculptural commissions to complete artworks for a range of projects, institutions and councils – both permanent and temporary.  Recent projects include a commission for Deutschebank in Sydney, a series of permanent steel works for Auckland City, a forthcoming series of bronze sculptures for The Economist Plaza, London through The Contemporary Arts Society.



MICHAEL ZAVROS

Michael Zavros was born in 1974. He graduated from Queensland College of Art with a Bachelor of Visual Arts in 1996 where he has subsequently worked as a sessional lecturer in painting and printmaking. Since graduating he has taken part in numerous group exhibitions including Primavera 2000 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Sebastian: Contemporary Realist Painting, Quiet Collision: Current Practice/Australian Style, Associazione ViaFarini, Milan, Italy 2003 and New Nature at Govett Brewster Gallery, New Zealand in 2007. Solo exhibitions include Everything I wanted, for which he was awarded an Arts Queensland Development Grant, at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane in 2003/2004 and There Goes A Narwhal (with Nell) at Gertrude St Contemporary Art Spaces in 2008.

Michael Zavros is the recipient of several awards and grants, including the 2002 Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award. In 2004 he was awarded the Primavera Collex Art Award through the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney and in 2005 he won the Robert Jacks Drawing Prize through Bendigo Art Gallery, Victoria. In 2004, 2005 and 2006 he was a finalist in The Archibald Prize. In 2007 he was awarded the Kedumba Drawing Award and was appointed to the Visual Arts and Craft Board of the Australia Council for the Arts.

His work is held in numerous private and public collections, including Artbank, National Portrait Gallery, Collex, ABN AMRO, Gold Coast City Art Gallery, Grafton Regional Art Gallery and TMAG (Tasmanian Museum and Gallery).

In 2001 Michael Zavros was awarded the Australia Council Visual Arts/Craft Fund, Milan Residency and more recently, the VACF Barcelona Residency in 2005. In 2003 he was awarded a Cite International des Arts Residency in Paris through the Power Institute, University of Sydney. In 2004 he was the recipient of a residency at the Gunnery Studios, Sydney, from the NSW Ministry for the Arts.